


snakeroot, hemlock, nightshade, oleander

by arbitrarily



Category: The Favourite (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Demons, Comes Back Wrong, F/F, Hate Sex, Temporary Character Death, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-04 15:01:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: The promise of vengeance—you cannot leave Hell without it.





	snakeroot, hemlock, nightshade, oleander

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosedamask](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosedamask/gifts).

She returns from Hell with more than one souvenir. The first is Life, renewed and restored now as it is. The second is a gash, too ragged and sore to be elegant. It curls beneath her eye and along her cheek as if she was first grazed and then branded by a poisonous serpent. The third is the tattoo that beats solid and vicious in her chest, calling out for one thing and one thing only. Vengeance. You cannot leave Hell without it.

Sarah wakes to the sound of grunting and the damp impact of flesh on flesh. 

“Am I in Hell?” Her voice, gravel-thick, hurts her throat as the words drag from her mouth.

The female half of the copulating equation on the other side of the room snorts. She does not so much as lose her pace as she considers Sarah’s prone form. “She breathes and wakes and speaks,” she says as if there was not only a wager but one she has now won. “Welcome back to the living, love.”

It is a long day’s journey to return to the palace. When she arrives, not one guard attempts to stop her. Her entrance is granted, an abashed look of fright bestowed on each stoic guard’s face. She is met with even greater horror when she interrupts the recital. Her boots echo on the floor as first the strings falter and then the warbling soprano stops mid-note and gasps. 

Only Abigail presents as undisturbed. She looks to Sarah as if she is undecided whether an anticipation has finally manifested or if she is disappointed with the outcome.

“Leave us,” Abigail says. Sarah sets her jaw as she watches how well she is obeyed. They stand together, as if on ceremony, shoulders squared to face each other. It is much as Sarah had taught her while shooting. She was a quick study then. There is nothing in Abigail to bely her faith that she will not only take but make her shot. 

When the door clicks shut, Abigail lets her pantomime of courtly sympathy and decorum sluice off of her. “Do you speak, or is your tongue in as much disrepair as the rest of you?”

“No thanks to you,” Sarah says. She approaches her, and to Abigail’s credit, she does not cower nor step back. She stops just before her and considers both her dress and the contented laziness that has already begun to settle along her mouth. “If I told you that you had killed me, what might you say?”

“That I might have tried harder, for here you stand, too gruesome I suppose for even the grave.” Abigail sets her mouth in a patronizing moue. “Unless, pray tell, might you be a ghost? Have I earned the honor of your spirit for a companion?”

Sarah steps closer and this time, Abigail is not as quick nor as strong. She recoils, perhaps believing her own nonsense. That Sarah is now but a ghost, a specter come to haunt her. The truth, Sarah knows, is far worse. 

She waits until Abigail has trapped herself into a literal corner, her back flush with the wall, her hands clasped before her tightly. And then she advances forward.

Sarah does not stop until she has violated any tenet or propriety and personal space. The tips of her boots disappear beneath Abigail’s voluminous skirt and should she lean in any closer she would be able to feel the girl’s heart beat against her recently reignited own. She can smell her though, the floral perfume liberally applied to her collarbone and neck. On her, the scent has curdled into something sour. She watches Abigail’s nostrils flare as she takes a deep breath. She sees the way her eyes flicker, the tiny indent between her brows as she thinks. So canny and rarely careful, this one.

“You should have stayed dead,” Abigail whispers.

Sarah clucks her tongue. “Cousin, dearest, I return to you with one purpose and one purpose alone.”

“Christ, you stink.” Abigail tries to rear back from her but she has nowhere to go.

“Brimstone, Abigail. Give me a week, and it will be all the rage.”

“A week?” And there is that animal slyness. It spreads across Abigail’s face, warping it, until she is both someone else and still someone very much the same. “I shall give you nothing more than I already have.”

“A poisoned cup then, a knife in the back—these are the gifts you consider to suffice?”

Whatever misgivings Abigail had when she tried to escape her, they’re gone now. The overconfidence all but seeps from her. “I think it best you visit with a doctor. You are very clearly unwell. We will find you one, and horse and carriage, and happily alight you from this palace.” Abigail’s mouth parts open as she reaches forward in something worse than a grin. She takes a strand of Sarah’s tangled locks between her fingers like a snake plucked from the grass. She says, “A hairdresser too, perhaps,” but Sarah is not listening. She swats at Abigail’s hand. Abigail smirks, as if in triumph.

Sarah sneers. “‘This palace,’ she says, as if it was her alone who built it.”

“Speak your purpose, foul cousin, and be gone. While I may have achieved for myself a great many things—a husband, a fine bedchamber and finer gowns, the Queen’s favor and a maid of my own—I fear I have lost near as many, too. Patience ranks chief among them.”

“You speak to me as if authority is but another present you have extorted from our Queen.”

“Anne is very generous, especially when she is at long last satisfied.”

Sarah spits in Abigail’s face. That pale as milk face of hers flushes heated and, perhaps, excited. “You use her name, as if you have the right,” Sarah snarls.

Abigail does nothing to wipe her face clean. Instead, she thrusts it out, her chin proud, as if expecting Sarah to clean her. “I have earned it.”

The girl’s face is still flushed, and if not for the sour, smug bend of her mouth, the way her eyes glint like hot coals left in the grate, one could almost see how the Queen could mistake such a thing for cherub rather than devil. Dotty Anne, Sarah thinks, with a fondness she wishes she had shed below. Without Sarah here, without her guiding hand, this is what Anne does. She lets the wolf through the door and she makes a space in her warm bed.

“Has your time away erased your memory of etiquette and protocol? You know the court will be nothing but abuzz about you. And imagine, should anyone enter this room now, what would they think? Duchess Marlborough, behaving like a common strumpet, dragged in off her knees from the nearest tavern.”

“You tried to kill me and now from me you request well manners.”

“I hardly meant to kill you,” Abigail says blithely. “Incapacitate, yes. Anything fatal was mere happenstance.”

That hot stone in Sarah’s chest—has it always been there? Did she always possess it and simply refuse to recognize it for what it is? She can see it clearly now, she wishes to cradle it, as one might a dangerous lover. Rage. Revenge. She views both as prizes well-deserved.

“Do you know where I was dragged from, Abigail?” She drops her name like a harsh indictment.

“You wrongly assume I care far more about you and your whereabouts to even attempt a proper guess. Let us assume you were dragged from a horse.”

Sarah leans in closer. Her lips all but brush the hinge of Abigail’s jaw. “Hell.”

Abigail cranes her neck so she might boldly look Sarah in the eye.“Anne calls you pragmatic but, my, you have quite the flair for drama.” Abigail lowers her voice, soft and mockingly polite. “When we evict you from this place, perhaps you shall find a small spot of your own upon the stage.”

Sarah moves quickly. It is her hand clamped around Abigail’s throat, tight enough to make her cousin gasp, her features scramble wide in surprise. “You have used the Queen’s name twice with me. Attempt a third and I shall wring your scrawny neck for the offense.”

“You threaten me.”

“I merely speak the only language I know you to understand.”

Abigail’s eyes narrow. “Unhand me.”

“Why? Would you prefer my hand elsewhere?” Sarah draws her hand down the length of Abigail’s throat, over the twin fork of her collarbones, to let it rest over the bared tops of her breasts. Her skin is soft for a former lady’s maid and she is very much so alive; Sarah can feel it. “I know,” Sarah says, “that this is the only way you believe power to be gained.” Abigail’s skirts are heavy, but Sarah lifts them easily enough. Her hand searches blindly for the slit in her drawers, the slit that waits beneath, and Abigail does nothing to stop her.

“So, Cousin,” Sarah says. Her fingers brush against her curls and then push further, more insistent, against her cunt. This was not her intention, not as she left the brothel and not as she journeyed back to this place that is meant to be hers. But now that she has started down this course of action she cannot imagine doing anything else. “I shall take.”

For a girl that is all performance, she cannot feign what is between her legs. Sarah’s nails are chipped and ragged and Abigail makes a noise when they scratch at her. Sarah finds her cunt hot and damp. One finger sinks easily into her but two takes a bit of force. Abigail tosses her hair haughtily back, her skull colliding with the wall behind her, as she both gasps and giggles. Sarah’s fingers twist within her.

“You thief what belongs to the Queen and to my husband with such enthusiasm.”

Sarah huffs a breath of laughter. “And you are so willing to debase yourself as a thing to be bought and sold and owned.” She flicks her thumb where she knows Abigail wants her most. Abigail reacts as both hoped and promised: her spine goes tight before her back bows and her breasts thrust forward against Sarah. “Have you no shame.” It is not a question. She knows she has none.

Sweat has begun to bead along Abigail’s hairline as she works her hips down onto Sarah’s hand. Evidence of her willingness, her desire, pools in the palm of her hand and threatens to drip along the webbing of her fingers.

“One cannot survive should shame serve as an impediment.” Even breathless, she sounds so proud of herself. She, Sarah realizes, thinks she is still the one in command. Sarah adds a third finger, and Abigail’s mouth drops open at the stretch. Her mouth is pretty like this, Sarah thinks. When she abandons all her posturing and gives in to the petty, hungry creature that resides beneath. Abigail says a word that is all wobbly vowels, that sounds a lot like, “_oh_.”

“Not another word out of you,” Sarah hisses, and she begins to fuck her with her hand in earnest, demanding a recompense she knows her ambitious cousin will never afford. Sarah cannot remember dying anymore than she can remember what it meant to walk through Hell. But she can still feel it within her, a thick sludge, like molten lava. It burns through her.

Abigail’s breast heaves beneath the confines of her bodice, her pale skin mottled red with want and warmth. Sarah can feel her own heat pool between her legs. With a private grin she imagines Abigail, laid out, that face of hers beneath her, Sarah’s thighs pressed tight against her ears. Making that impertinent mouth work on her behalf. 

Abigail comes with a wet shudder, her face twisted into something disbelieving and resentful even beneath the pleasure. She recovers quickly enough, her court mask slipped on, easily mocking the effort it took to remove it.

Abigail leans back against the wall. Her eyes are heavy-lidded and a distant smile graces her mouth. “Is this how you intend I advocate your stay here? Your fingers, skilled as they are, hard at work in my cunt? I appreciate the effort, but—”

She stops abruptly when Sarah presses her body against her. She must be able to feel the otherworldly and impossible heat that boils within Sarah. She wants her to. How she looks forward to teaching her all that she has learned from this impromptu journey Abigail has sent her on. She watches Abigail catalog the flash of her teeth and the crudeness of her scar, the stench caught in her hair and upon her skin. Fear settles uncertainly over Abigail and Sarah laughs. Hell is everywhere. You take it with you.

“Oh, but darling girl, I have returned. I shall stay. And this time?” She licks each finger. Abigail tastes tart and biting, never sweet. She meets Abigail’s eye. She will teach her to burn. “I bring tricks of my own.”


End file.
